INCOME CONVERGENCE DURING THE DISINTEGRATION OF THE WORLD ECONOMY 1919-39

Branko Milanovic

Economic History from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Some economists have argued that the process of disintegration of the world economy between the two World Wars led to income divergence between the countries. This is in keeping with the view that economic integration leads to income convergence. The paper shows that the view that the period 1919-39 was associated with divergence of incomes among the rich countries is wrong. On the contrary, income convergence continued and even accelerated. Since the mid-19th century, rich countries’ incomes tended to converge in peacetime regardless of whether their economies were more or less integrated. This, in turn, implies that it may not be trade and capital and labor flows that matter for income convergence but some other, less easily observable, forces like diffusion of information and technology.

Keywords: globalization; inequality; world; inter-war history (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F02 N30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2003-03-29
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
Note: Type of Document - pdf; prepared on IBM PC ; to print on PostScript; pages: 35; figures: included
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/eh/papers/0303/0303002.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Income convergence during the disintegration of the world economy, 1919-39 (2003)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpa:wuwpeh:0303002

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economic History from University Library of Munich, Germany
Bibliographic data for series maintained by EconWPA ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).